This weekend we planted two apple trees and a pear tree in memory of my Dad. I’m hoping these can become a tangible and material  way to remember him. I have a had a constant feeling, intense at times, that there must be something ‘I can do’. I guess this is the helplessness of grief. I’ve resisted reading any material about grief and resisted writing about it all, I wanted to wait and indeed I hoped that some kind of answer or action might present itself to me. Dad had fruit trees in his garden, the fate of these trees, the passage of time marked in and through them, provided material for his last art work. He had hoped to make it through to the spring to see the trees blossom, it wasn’t to be and he was ‘taken’ in the early spring.

Let these trees blossom and let this small piece of France be a place of memory to my dear Father.